National Security Agency

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Dear President Obama: The Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide, is writing to express its concern about the effects of intelligence and law enforcement activities undertaken by agencies, over which your administration has oversight, on the free flow of news and other information in the public interest.

In Pakistan, where freedom of expression is largely perceived as a Western notion, the Snowden revelations have had a damaging effect. The deeply polarized narrative has become starker as the corridors of power push back on attempts to curb government surveillance. "If the citizens of the United States of America cannot have these rights, how can you? .." is an argument that rights advocate hear way too often. The Snowden revelations quickly became a moment of recognition for those otherwise labeled as conspiracy theorists who believed that all digital transmissions become a tool that can be used by the U.S. government. Unlike, for example, Brazil, which has fought back, the government of Pakistan is working on ways it could replicate a NSA-like model in this country.

The Brazilian government's concern for the safety of an American journalist stands in contrast to a dismal performance protecting its own reporters.
By Carlos Lauría

Demonstrators clash with riot policemen during a protest in Rio de Janeiro's on June 17, 2013, against the billions of dollars spent preparing for soccer's World Cup and against an increase in mass transit fares. (AFP/Tasso Marcelo)

Today, a broad coalition of technology
companies, human rights organizations, political groups, and others will take to
the Web and to the streets
to protest mass surveillance. The mobilization, known as "The Day We Fight
Back," honors activist and technologist Aaron
Swartz, who passed away just over a year ago. Throughout the day, the
campaign will encourage individuals to contact their representatives, pressure
their employers, and march for an end to government surveillance practices that
sweep up huge amounts of data, often indiscriminately.

San Francisco, February 7, 2014--The Committee to Protect
Journalists is deeply troubled by a report that a potential operation by the British
intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) involved
covert surveillance of reporters' communications. GCHQ sought to use journalists
to pass both information and disinformation to intelligence targets, according to documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden and obtained
by NBC News.

Tonight
President Obama has another opportunity to redirect the country's out-of-control
surveillance programs during his annual State of the Union address. He should seize
it. The president's much-anticipated January 17 speech about U.S. surveillance
policy, which came in response to outrage over National Security Agency spying,
left much unsaid--and many of the commitments he did make were lacking the
clarity needed to lift the chill on journalism and other forms of free
expression that such programs create.

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When President Obama takes
the lectern to discuss U.S. surveillance policy, as he is expected
to do Friday, those hoping for sweeping reform are likely to be disappointed. As
reported
in The New York Times, the president
appears poised to reject many of the recommendations of his Review Group on Intelligence
and Communications Technologies, a brain trust of five
experts he handpicked to study U.S. intelligence practices in the wake of
disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.